In honor of the World Cup, I’m posting this luggage tag my grandparents received in the early 1970s when they flew from Chicago to Johannesburg. Back in the day, hotels and airlines gave out stickers like this one.
Flying to South Africa during apartheid wasn’t easy. My grandparents flew from Chicago to Amsterdam, then on to Kano, Nigeria before arriving in Johannesburg. At that time, the African countries that allowed flights to South Africa were Nigeria and Kenya.
Times have certainly changed.
But I still think about what South Africa was like back then. A couple months ago I asked my grandma about that trip.
She said they stayed with Jewish friends in Cape Town. Jews had settled in South Africa long before apartheid, and while the Jewish community as a whole didn’t come out against apartheid until the 1980s, my grandma said her friends didn’t support apartheid.
I often wonder what it would be like to live somewhere that didn’t treat everyone fairly, but gave you a chance when other places wouldn’t.
It’s a dilemma I’m glad I don’t have to experience.
aged 9, 1967, our ship pulled into durban docks for the day en route to hong kong. first shock was seeing prisoners all shackled together in foot irons… second shock, buses divided in two halves with a cage in between, third shock, white-only stores, banks – even the parks had designated benches, those painted white and the others, green (with labels should you forget). never been back but those traumatic memories still haunt me ;( i take solace in the fact that things are slowly improving
That’s so horrible, Vanessa. I’ll have to ask my grandma more about her trip there. I’ve heard the Belgian Congo was even worse, not that that would excuse South Africa.
Very interesting, Susan. My parents didn’t travel much, although my mom did go to Cuba, and if I remember correctly, she also had a cool sticker on her luggage.
And I don’t want to make light of apartheid, but we STILL don’t have equal rights for many in this country today. No marriage equality, women still don’t make as much as men, and ask if we have equal rights and you’ll most definitely get different answers from blacks and whites.
We may have come a long way, but we still have a ways to go.
Thanks so much, Van! Budgie told me about these luggage stickers. He said the airlines would rip them off if you put them on your suitcases. I think my grandfather took his mom to Cuba in the 30s, but I’ll have to find out more details. Speaking of freedoms, we have never really had the freedom to travel wherever we want. It’s not as important as the other freedoms you mentioned, of course. But, still, it also says something about ways in which we can change.